Despite the importance of politicians, empirical work rarely examines who decides to enter
politics and why. This survey presents conceptual issues in measuring political entry; …

How do stigmatized political preferences become normalized? I argue that the parliamentary
representation of the radical right normalizes radical right support. Radical right politicians …

A central question in development economics is whether there are adequate checks and
balances on the executive. This paper provides causal evidence of how increasing …

Using an original survey conducted in India's largest state, we offer systematic evidence on
the gender gaps in a rich set of electoral and non-electoral participation metrics. We find that …

This article studies candidate selection by party leaders and asks whether poor information
about public preferences can lead elite choices to diverge from mass opinion. Working with …

What role does information play in shaping mass support in dominant party settings? We
conduct a field experiment during the 2016 Ugandan parliamentary elections that provides …

Can competent political leaders bring significant policy changes to communities otherwise
doomed by “bad” informal institutions? This question has remained unanswered because of …

We document that electoral candidates nominated by political parties fare better than the
office-eligible population in multi-dimensional tests of cognitive and non-cognitive ability …

A vast literature suggests that female representation is positively associated with women's
political knowledge and participation and that direct demonstration effects underpin these …

Randomizing different schools of thought in training altruism finds that training junior deputy
ministers in the utility of empathy renders at least a 0.4 standard deviation increase in …